Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 17

"What did you do, Pat?"

"I saw a woman crying in front of a cathedral. She had a baby in her arms, and I said: 'Madam, what are you crying about?'

"She said: 'I had two dollars in me handkerchief and came to have me baby christened but I lost the money.'

"I said: 'Don't cry, Madam, here is a ten dollar bill; go get the baby christened and bring me the change.' She went, and soon after returned and handed me eight silver dollars."

"Well," said the friend, "I don't see any three good things in that."

"Ye don't! Didn't I dry the woman's tears, didn't I save the baby's soul, and didn't I get rid of a ten dollar counterfeit bill and get eight good silver dollars in return?"

That is what prohibition of the saloon does for a community. It dries woman's tears, saves human souls, gets rid of a counterfeit business and puts good business instead.

Is it a counterfeit business? It has been well said, "Go into the butcher stall and you get meat for money, into the shoe store and you get shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-gotten gains on one side, mis-spent wages on the other, a mess of pottage on one side and the birthright of some mother's boy on the other."

A great wail is going up from the advocates of the liquor traffic that statewide prohibition means the destruction of immense vested interests and dire results will follow.

"This our craft is in danger," has ever been the cry against reforms or changes in civilization since the "Shrine Makers of Ephesus."

When slavery was abolished it was said: "This means ruin to the South!

Such a confiscation of property, with every slave set free to beg at the white man's gate, crushes every vestige of hope, and five hundred years will not bring relief." Only fifty years have pa.s.sed and the South is richer than ever in her history.

Justice Grier of the Supreme Court said: "If loss of revenue should accrue to the United States from a diminished consumption of ardent spirits, she will be the gainer a thousandfold in health, wealth and happiness of the people."

If this is true, then this question is not only a great moral question but also a tremendous economic problem.

If production should be for use and not for abuse, the existence of breweries and distilleries are without excuse.

If one should be rewarded on the basis of service, the saloon keeper has no claim for even tolerance, much less reward.

If labor is the basis of value, men who live by selling liquor to their fellowmen are leaches on the body politic, and Ishmaels in the commercial world.

The claim that the liquor business is a benefit to a community or to the country is in harmony with the a.s.sertion that war is a "biological necessity" and a "stimulating source of development."

General Sherman said: "War is h.e.l.l." Certainly the one now raging between the leading nations of the old world is a h.e.l.l of carnage. And yet intemperance has destroyed more lives than all the wars of the world since time began. It has added to the death of the body the eternal death of the soul and then the sum of its ravages is not complete until is added more broken hearts, more blasted hopes, desolate homes, more misery and shame than from any source of evil in the world. If what Sherman said of war is true, and the liquor curse is worse than war, how can this government hope to escape punishment for raising revenue from a business so abominable and wicked?

A heathen emperor when appealed to for a tax on opium as a source of revenue said: "I will not consent to raise the revenue of my country upon the vices of its people." Yet this Christian republic, claiming the n.o.blest civilization of the earth, is found turning the dogs of appet.i.te and avarice loose upon the home life of the republic that gold may clink in its treasury. The politician's excuse for this compromise with earth's greatest destroyer is, it can never be prohibited and therefore regulation and revenue is the best policy.

I can well remember when the same was said of slavery. With billions of dollars invested in slaves, with a united South behind it and the North divided, it could never be abolished. At that time the prospect for the overthrow of slavery was far less than the prospect of national prohibition today. I own I was among those who said "slavery cannot be destroyed." Now I am one of the reconstructed. I'm like the pig I used to read of, "When I lived I lived in clover, and when I died I died all over."

During the Civil War Union soldiers arrested several of my neighbors and took them to a northern prison. My southern blood was aroused. I said: "Let a Yankee soldier come to take me and he will never take another Kentuckian." Then my mother was alarmed. She knew how brave her boy was. A few days later I met a squad of Yankee cavalry on the road near our home. They said "Halt!" and I halted. They said "Surrender!" I did so, and mother did not hear of any blood being shed.

Again a half-drunk Union soldier rode up to our gate and said: "Who lives here?" When I answered, he asked: "Can your mother get supper for fourteen soldiers in thirty minutes?" "No, sir, she cannot," I replied. Drawing a pistol, the mouth of which looked like a cannon's mouth to me, he said: "Maybe you have changed your mind." I had, and that supper was ready with several minutes to spare. We can, and we _will_ stop the liquor business. I am amazed, however, to find so many intelligent men of the North advocating the same policy on this liquor problem the South adopted on the slavery question, which cost her so severely. I find the same effect revenue in slaves had upon the consciences of the tax-payers of the South, high-license revenue from saloons is having upon the consciences of tax-payers in the North.

In the early days of slavery, when wealth in the inst.i.tution was very limited, the conscience of the South was against slavery. Old Virginia, when a colony, appealed to King George to remove the threatening danger from her borders. It was the voice of a General Lee of Virginia that was lifted against slavery in the House of Burgesses.

But with the pa.s.sing of time slaves grew in value, until a slave in the South reached about the price of a saloon license now in the North. Then the conscience of the South quieted and slavery was justified by press, politics and pulpit. There is a remarkable a.n.a.logy between the effect of a thousand dollar slave upon the conscience of South Carolina and a thousand dollar saloon upon the conscience of Ma.s.sachusetts. The South paid the penalty of her mistaken policy; the North will reap its reward in retribution, if it persists in making the price of a saloon in the North the same as the price of a slave in the South. When the value of a world is profitless compared with the worth of a soul then even if every saloon were a Klond.y.k.e of gold this republic could not afford to legalize the liquor business for revenue.

I believe my northern friends will permit me to press home a little further the lesson of southern slavery. The phase I would impress is that any question that has a great moral principle involved is never settled until it is settled right. We tried to regulate slavery but it wouldn't regulate. First it was decided that the importation of slaves should cease in twenty years. Did that settle it? Next came the Missouri compromise, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther."

Politicians said: "Now it's settled." But a fanatic in Boston name Garrison said: "It is not settled." Daniel Webster, as intellectual as some of our high license advocates of today said to Lloyd Garrison: "Stop the agitation of this question or you will bring trouble on the country; the compromise is made and the question is settled." Lloyd Garrison replied: "I don't care what compromise you've made; you may pull down my office, pitch my type into the sea, and hound me through the streets of Boston, but you will never settle the slavery question until you settle it right."

It kept breaking out despite all legislative restrictions. At last Columbia with one hand on her head, and the other on her heart, began to reel on her throne, and Abraham Lincoln seized his pen and signed the proclamation, "Universal Emanc.i.p.ation." Then the whole world said: "It's forever settled." So the liquor question will be settled as was the slavery question, by the universal, everlasting abolition of the manufacture, sale and importation of intoxicating liquor in this country.

High license is another Missouri Compromise. If you have the drink you'll have the drunkenness. If you have the cause you will have the effect. If you have the positive you will have the superlative: Positive drink, comparative drinking, superlative drunkenness. You may try high-tax and low-tax but all the time you will have sin-tax and more sin than tax.

You do not change the nature of the drink by the price of a license, the kind of a place in which it is sold or the character of the man who sells it. Put a pig in a parlor; feed him on the best the marflet affords, give him a feather bed in which to sleep, keep him there till he's grown and he'll be a hog. You don't change the nature of the pig by the elegant surroundings; you may change the condition of the parlor.

There is but one solution of the liquor problem and that is a nation-wide prohibitory law and behind the law a political power in sympathy with the law and pledged to its enforcement.

Many admit the principle is correct but insist we should wait until public sentiment is powerful enough to enforce the law. If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment Moses would never have given the commandments to the world. If grand ideas had waited for public sentiment, we would still be back in the realm of the dark ages, instead of in the light of our present civilization; back in the dim twilight of the tallow-dip instead of the brightness of the electric light; back with the ox team instead of the speed of the steam engine, automobile and aeroplane; and on the temperance question back to where a liquor dealer could advertise his business on gravestones. On a tomb in England are these words:

"Here lies below in hope of Zion, The landlord of the Golden Lion, His son keeps up the business still, Obedient to his country's will."

Years ago a friend said to me: "I admire your zeal, but I wonder at your faith when you are in such a miserable minority." My reply was: "Are minorities always wrong or hopeless? How would you have enjoyed being with the majority at the time of the flood? It seems to me you would have been safer with Noah in the ark."

As to license and prohibition, that has always been the question since man was created. It was the question in the Garden of Eden when the devil stood for license, "go eat," and G.o.d stood for prohibition, "thou shalt not." That is the question today and I am quite sure G.o.d and the devil stand now as then, and while the Adams are divided, the Eves are nearly all on one side.

Another said: "After all the work done for temperance the people drink as much or more than ever." My answer is: how much more would they drink if we had not done what has been done?

Yonder on the ocean a vessel springs a leak and soon the water stands thirty inches deep in the hold. The captain says: "To the pumps!" and the sailors leap to their places. At the end of one hour the captain measures and says: "Thirty inches; you are holding it down." Hour after hour the pumping goes on, with changing hands at the pumps, and hour after hour the captain says: "You are doing well; she can't go down at thirty inches. Hold it there and we'll make the harbor."

Twenty hours and the captain shouts: "Thirty inches; and land is in sight. Pump on, my boys, you'll save the s.h.i.+p." Suppose one of our croakers who says, "Prohibition won't prohibit," had been on board. He would have said: "Don't you see you are doing no good; there's just as much water as when you began." What would have become of the s.h.i.+p?

At the close of the Civil War intemperance was pouring in upon the s.h.i.+p of State. Men returned from war enthralled in chains worse than African slavery, for rum slavery means ruin to body and soul. Men, women and children ran to the pumps, and thank G.o.d, state after state is going dry. Soon we'll see the land of promise, and the s.h.i.+p of State will be saved from a leak as dangerous as ever sprung in a vessel, and from as cruel a crew of buccaneers as ever scuttled a s.h.i.+p.

When I began the work as a "Good Templar" forty years ago, Kentucky was soaked in rum. Bourbon county, where I was reared, had twenty-three distilleries, and a dead wall lifted itself against my hopes of ever seeing the sky clear of distillery smoke above old Bourbon county, a name on more barrels and bottles, on more bar-room windows, and on the memories of more drunkards in ruin than any other county in the world. Yet I have lived to see the last distillery fire go out, and Bourbon county dry. While I had faith in the ultimate triumph of the Cause I never dreamt it would come to Bourbon county in my lifetime.

When I began saloons were at almost every crossroads village, and the bottle on sideboards was the rule in thousands of leading homes. Time and again my life was threatened. On one occasion twelve armed men guarded me from a mob, and once my wife placed herself between my body and a desperate mountaineer. Those were perilous times for an advocate of temperance in my native state. Now out of one hundred and twenty counties, one hundred and seven are dry. In Georgia the licensed saloon is gone; in North Carolina the saloon is gone; in West Virginia, Old Virginia, Mississippi and Tennessee the saloon is gone, while Oklahoma was born sober.

"That which made Milwaukee famous Doesn't foam in Tennessee; The Sunday lid in old Missouri Was Governor Folk's decree.

Brewers, distillers and their cronies Well may sigh; The saloon is panic-stricken, And the South's going dry.

"Soon the hill-side by the rill-side Of Kentucky will be still; Men will take their toddies From the ripples of the rill; Boys will grow up sober, Mothers cease to cry; Glory hallelujah!

The South's going dry."

Already seventeen states are dry, and there are many arid spots in the wet states. While I cannot hope to live to see the final triumph, I have faith to believe my children and my children's children will live in a saloonless land, a land redeemed from a curse that has soaked its social life in more blood and tears than all other sources of sorrow; a land where liberty will no longer be shorn of its locks of strength by licensed Delilahs; where manhood will no more be stripped of its possibilities by the claws of the demon drink; where fore-doomed generations will not reach the dawning of life's morning, to be bound like Mazeppa to the wild, mad steed of pa.s.sion and borne down the blood lines of inheritance to the awful abuse of drunkenness.

To this end I appeal to every minister of the gospel, stir the consciences of your hearers on this question. I appeal to the press, that potent power for the enlightenment of the people.

"Pulpit and press with tongue and pen, Set to new music this message to men: Let the great work of destruction begin, And rid our loved land of this shelter to sin.

As before the sun's brightness, the darkness must fly, So by power of the ballot the rum curse must die, Then cover the earth as the wide waves the sea, With the sound of the axe at the root of the tree!"

VIII

IF I COULD LIVE LIFE OVER.